


Sing-Along Songs (The “You Better Look Out For Mr Stork” Duet)

by biichan



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Gen, Remix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-08-14
Updated: 2009-08-14
Packaged: 2017-10-05 00:44:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/35894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/biichan/pseuds/biichan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Johnny and the TARDIS make music together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sing-Along Songs (The “You Better Look Out For Mr Stork” Duet)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TigerKat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TigerKat/gifts).



> Remix of TigerKat's fic [](http:)Listening.
> 
> With thanks to ionlylurkhere for beta-reading.

It had started when she fell into the ravine. She'd spent long, lonely months there, tilted at an uncomfortable angle, until her little ones had finally returned to her side. And when they did, they brought a new life form.

It was hardly anything. Just a tiny cluster of cells. But it hadn't been there before and now it was in the abdomen of her little Barbarawright.

Perhaps it was a parasite? That was the sort of thing that happened to her little ones when they ventured Outside. But if it was a parasite, it was no parasite she'd ever seen before. Perhaps, she thought, it would be best to wait before doing anything.

She waited. She waited and she waited and all the while Barbarawright, Ianchesterton, Vickipallister and her own Best Beloved ran around, as little ones did, venturing outside and coming home dirty and tired. Time passed and the life form inside Barbarawright grew bigger, developed limbs and facial features, and finally began to think.

She heard its thoughts. She heard all the thoughts of her little ones. She had to—it was what allowed them to talk to each other, when their native tongues were so disparate from one another. She was their translator as well as their caretaker.

She heard its thoughts and that was when she realized what had been eluding her since that she'd left that horrible ravine: Barbarawright was _budding_! With that epiphany came a surge of joy that shook her walls. (Her Best Beloved fussed and muttered something about turbulence.)

She sang to the tiny life form. She sang the songs of travel through the stars and through the vortex. She sang songs of starlight and moonlight and the blue-red shift—she sang songs of alien skies and the cries of strange birds. She sang of the duties of a Ship, of the care of the little ones, of the joys of roaming free and unfettered. She sang joy and melancholy and wonder.

Of being lost in time.

Lost in space.

And finding meaning.

Meaning, it repeated back to her and shared its own song: one of warmth and safety and darkness, floating endlessly through its shifting changes.

Stay with me, she asked it. Stay with me. When you are through with your budding, when you are apart from Barbarawright, stay here with me and we will sing together forever.

But it didn't stay. She would learn later that they never stayed. All of her little ones left in the end. Only her Best Beloved stayed, shifting and changing as the years went by.

Still. She thought the tiny life form might have stayed with her as well, if only it had been able to leave its mother.

* * *

Johnny was playing Block and Pepper Pot. It was one of his favorite games and one he never got scolded for, unlike the game where he banged on pots with a wooden spoon. It was an easy game. You took the pepper pot in one hand and made growling noises. You took the blue block in the other hand and you made it sing. The pepper pot tried to hurt the block, but the singing scared it away. Johnny made the pepper pot run away and the block chase it.

His mummy and daddy were having a party. It was for the men on the moon. They'd invited all of his Not-Aunts and his Not-Uncles. Johnny had real aunts and uncles, of course: Aunt Louisa, Uncle Tom, and Aunt Katy. But none of the real aunts and uncles were there. It was just the pretend ones, the ones that Johnny called aunt and uncle but really weren't. They'd all watched the men on the moon together. They'd bounced around like rabbits. Johnny wanted to go to the moon. Aunt Martha and Uncle Ben and Aunt Polly and The Doctor had already been there.

(The Doctor was a Not-Uncle, but he didn't like to be called Uncle. He said Johnny could call him Grandfather, but he looked so much younger than Johnny's Grandpa Wright that Johnny didn't feel like he _should_ call the Doctor Grandfather.)

But now the men on the moon were gone from the telly screen and everyone had clumped together. Aunt Martha (who was a pretty brown color) and Aunt Victoria (who had the longest brown hair) were still sitting close together on the floor by the telly, talking softly to each other. Aunt Polly and Uncle Ben were in the kitchen together, laughing. Aunt Dodobird had wandered off to change her baby's nappy. (Aunt Dodobird was the only one of the Not-Aunts and Not-Uncles to have a baby, but the baby was boring and a _girl_ besides and the only thing the baby knew how to do with blocks was to chew them. Johnny hoped his little brother or sister wouldn't be as boring as Aunt Dodobird's baby.)

Johnny's mummy and daddy were sitting on the sofa and talking with the Doctor. Johnny had the block chase the pepper pot closer to the sofa, so he could hear what they were saying.

"Will you be naming this one after me too?" the Doctor was saying.

Johnny's daddy made an snorting noise. "We didn't _name_ Johnny after you. We named him after my father. I don't think you even called yourself John Smith when you were traveling with us. I know you're getting on in years—though you don't look it—but can't you even keep track of your own aliases?"

"Gillian," said Johnny's mummy, "if it's a girl. We're open for suggestions for a boy."

The Doctor grinned. "I'd suggest what they named _me_, but he wouldn't thank me for it. Not when the time comes for him to have to learn how to spell it."

Johnny's mummy laughed and after a moment Johnny's father laughed with her.

"So," said the Doctor in a very quiet voice. "I'm told that you may have gotten started a little early with Johnny. As early, perhaps, as Rome?"

Johnny's daddy didn't sound very happy. "Who told you that?"

"Johnny," said the Doctor.

"Doctor," Johnny's mummy said in her most scary voice, "Johnny is three."

"I did used to have a time machine, before the angels sent us here. Remember that? I ran into him a few years ago. Well, it's seventeen years from now for him. Congratulations, by the way. Your little boy's going to grow up to be a rock and roll singer."

"Oh, that's _just_ what we need," said Johnny's daddy and Johnny didn't have to see him to know he was rolling his eyes.

The pepper pot had got brave again and was creeping up on the blue block. It was time for the block to sing again. "Ooooh-eee-ooooh," sang Johnny.

It was the Blue Block Song. Sometimes he thought he'd always known it.

* * *

Tegan wasn't entirely sure how she'd ended up in the rock club that night. She had some vague memories of aimless wandering after leaving the Doctor—for good, it seemed like, unless he was going to pop into her life out of the blue again (and it was sad how much part of her wanted that.) She remembered seeing a concert poster plastered to the wall outside: a crude, badly colored thing with lurid writing.

**JOHNNY CHESS**, it had read. **LIVE AT DANTE'S INFERNO.**

And so she'd drifted in and ordered herself a beer, then found a table not too far from the stage. And waited.

Johnny Chess, it turned out, was a boy a few years younger than she was: dark-haired and good looking. He'd come with a drummer and a bassist and Tegan recalled there'd been other names on the poster in smaller letters.

They played a half-dozen numbers: good enough, but not exactly Led Zeppelin. They'd do for the night, Tegan thought and ordered another beer. Maybe she'd even stay around and try to talk to this Johnny Chess. (She bet it was just a stage name. His real name was probably something ridiculous like Humphrey or Aloysius.)

"This is the last song for the night," Johnny Chess was saying up on stage. Behind him the drummer was pounding a low and steady beat. "It's an instrumental. I don't know the words yet. I don't know when I will. I call it 'Blue.'"

His guitar sang, then, a wild and unearthly melody—nothing of this world at all—and Tegan realized, as a chill shot up her spine, that it was somehow familiar. It _felt_ like something she knew and it wasn't until the song was nearly over that Tegan realized what it was.

Johnny Chess—or Harvey or Francis or whatever his real name was—had put the TARDIS into a song.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for DW Remix 2009.
> 
> (This story takes place in the same rough ficverse as _Together, On This Same Earth_.)


End file.
